2021 Festival theme: Reconnect
2022 Festival theme: Common Ground

Reflecting on the 2021 and 2022 programs, Lindy Hume’s contribution as Creative Director to the Four Winds story can be best summed up in these themes:

• Expanding beyond pure music programming into multi-arts programming, including film (Leonard’s Beautiful Pictures), video (Home Stretch), opera (Acis and Galatea), contemporary dance (Cinco), meditation (Silence and the Piano) and theatre (The Iliad – Out Loud), all with music at their heart.
• Facilitating two major arts organisations to perform in our region - Sydney Dance Company and Pinchgut Opera both made special efforts to modify city-based programmes for the Four Winds context and brought high-level professional contemporary dance and opera to the region’s taxpayers for the first time.
• Expanding the scope for local professional artists to share the central festival platform (New Graces, Mikelangelo, Candelo artists) with their visiting colleagues, with important new legacy commissions.
• Showcasing our region and Yuin Culture with place-bases projects such as Home Stretch and Songs from Yuin Country, placing Yuin/Djiringanj Culture and Dhurga language front and centre, throughout the festival program.
• Ensuring programming depth, diversity and excellence at all levels of the festival; ensuring the audience experience of this festival flows, nourished and is unique within Australia.
• A last-minute change of venue for the 2022 Festival was in many ways its defining feature. Away from the elegant comfort zone of the Barragga Bay site, the audience and artist experience of the substitute venue of the Cobargo Showgrounds evoked the spirit of openness to adventure that characterises any good festival, and perhaps returned something of the essence of the early Four Winds festivals.

Home Stretch
A signature work for Four Winds 2022

The Tathra-Bermagui Road is iconic to our region. A much-loved 35km stretch of coastal road its winding journey encompasses spotted gum forests, coastal vistas, rolling hills and farmland. Along the way are pristine beaches, streams and lakes, Yuin and settler historic sites, a winery, galleries, charming wooden community halls, and – most memorably - five historic and pleasingly percussive wooden bridges. In 2021 five teams of local artists created a short site-specific performance video inspired by, and performed on, wooden bridges along the Tathra-Bermagui Rd. For the 2022 Four Winds Festival, Home Stretch was installed in intriguing locations along the road, creating an adventure journey for festival audiences

Home Stretch 2022
Four Winds Festival 2022
Four Winds Festival 2021 Press
Four Winds Festival 2022 Press

lindyhume@yahoo.com

Culture, music, storytelling, dance and image-making have been practiced on Country for millennia by Australia's First People. I acknowledge and pay respect to the original custodians of Culture and Country where I live in Tathra, the Djiringanj people of the Yuin Nation on the Far South Coast of New South Wales, and the palawa/pakana, First People of lutruwita Tasmania.